Star Light Ministries

Being an exotic dancer is the only job I can think of where you’re encouraged to drink alcoholic beverages at work. And not just encouraged, but in some localities, that’s how you make your money—dancers make a percentage of every beverage they sell. And it’s hard to fake drinking. Dancers have told me that their clients smell or taste the beverages to make sure that there is alcohol in them.

I do know women who dance who have adapted little “tricks” so that they won’t drink as much alcohol as they sell. First, they request drinks that have little alcohol in them. Next, they do the double cup game (with the waitress’ help), where they have a glass of water and a glass of champagne. She takes a sip of the champagne, holds it in her mouth, then acts as if she’s drinking her water, only to spit the alcohol into the water glass. The last trick I know about is the carpet trick. When the client turns away, the dancer spills just a bit of the beverage into the carpet.

Frankly, that last one helped me figure out why so many strip clubs smell like moldy, smoky carpet.

Now a dancer in a club in Birmingham has sued her club for letting her drive home drunk. You can see more here. There have to be more ramifications of alcohol use on the job. What could they be?

Sometimes in life we have to make difficult decisions. Those decisions may not be exactly what we WANT, but they are true to ourselves. But they are decisions that point us in the direction of the people we want to be, or at the very least, become.

Sometimes the four walls of my room seem to hold me rather than shelter me. My independence swallows me rather than liberates me. My many opportunities for change seem to mock me, leaving
me complacent, and perhaps with too many choices.

I’ve noticed over the last few days that many people in sex work feel the same way. While it’s always easy to just point to one or two reasons for this feeling, it’s probably not accurate to do so. Just as it’s not really accurate to say that my loneliness could be alleviated by being in a group of people. It may be true, but it’s not fully accurate.

But these are the feelings and explanations for the feelings in sex work that I’ve heard over the last few weeks:

Isolation

Judgment
Fear of judgment
Lack of things in common with people who aren’t in sex work or don’t understand it
Fear of being outed
Not wanting to lie or be untrue in order to make new friends

Loneliness

Working nights when everyone else is working days
Wanting to avoid the drama of other people
Partners and friends who “can’t handle it” or bring up sex work during arguments
Different interests than those you are working with

Inertia

The amount of energy it takes to “recover” from a couple of shifts
Sleeping late
Hangovers
Lack of money

There’s always a multiplicity of explanations. Just as there is a multiplicity of solutions.

Gotta go… I’m looking for solutions today.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday. We talked about the struggle of sex workers… the struggle of wanting to stand up for sex worker rights, but fear of being outed. Understanding that speaking out will mean fewer job opportunities, increased persecution, and unwanted attention.

Sex workers need allies. Allies and advocates can speak up without fear of retribution.

But experience has taught most sex workers that people who are outside of sex work are not trustworthy. Therefore, you can’t trust an ally.

So how do we bridge the gap?

Here is a poem from the book Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry, edited by Annie Oakley.

degrade

degradation
is not trading sex for money
but it is exchange
of social security number for food
degradation
is not stripping away minidress
but it is not having curtain
covering me in a public shower
degradation
is not faking orgasms on the phone
but it is faking compliance
with the court order
degradation
is not even being raped on the street
but it is the doctor asking me
“why does it bother you if you fuck
strangers anyway?”

~Emi Koyama

It reminds me, once again, of the pressing need to make our world a more just place for all people.

A friend sent me this and I thought it was funny.

A friend and I were having a conversation the other day about the stigma surrounding sex work and its effect on people trying to get out of the industry. Suddenly, she stopped.

“Lia,” she said, “You face the same sort of stigma in your work.”

“Huh?” I asked.

She answered, “Just like sex workers are stigmatized by the stereotypes that people have about sex workers, you’re stigmatized by the stereotypes that people have about Christians.”

I did a little research about the word stigma. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a stigma can be a mark of shame or discredit, a tattoo, an identifying mark, or a scar from a hot iron. Stigmata is the plural form.

I believe that my friend is right. I am stigmatized by the stereotypes that many carry for Christians. And just like in sex work, those stereotypes are more often the exception than the rule.

Wouldn’t life be much simpler and lovelier if we just took people for who they are instead of making assumptions about them?

A friend sent me this poem, and it made my day. Enjoy!

Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who knows only four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come Dance with Me.”
Come Dance.

~Hafez-e-Shirazi (1320-1389)

Most ministers I know dread Mother’s Day. Most congregations expect their minister to preach a Mother’s Day sermon, extolling the virtues of mothers.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a great experience with mothers. There are those who have lost children, or are not able to have them. There are those who have been poorly mothered. There are those who have chosen not to have children. And sermons about mothers leave them feeling empty, sad, or even angry.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, in her book Goddesses in Every Woman, talks about the life-cycle of women. We move from Maiden to Mother to Crone. The maiden is carefree, picking flowers, enjoying life. The mother is creative and self-sacrificing, bringing forth life. The crone is the juicy woman of wisdom.

I saw Bolen speak one time on these archetypes in women. I dreaded hearing her speak about mothers. I have chosen not to have children. I expected to be relegated to maidenhood for eternity, or at least until I become a crotchety old woman.

But that was not the case. Bolen includes women in the mother archetype who have not had children, but nonetheless have given birth. She may have given birth to an organization, to a project, to an art project, a book, a blog. Really, the mother has poured her life into another being, being both creative and self-sacrificing.

I realized then that I am a Mother. Are you a mother?

If you are, I salute you. I honor you. You are more precious than gold and finer than rubies.

There are a lot of different ideas about serving people in sex work. There are those who believe that people in sex work need to be rescued. There are those who believe that the people should be left alone to pursue their careers.

Let’s face it. Trafficking is a really sexy topic right now. From organizations like Stop the Traffik, the International Justice Mission, and the Polaris Project, even in the suburbs we are beginning to see that human slavery is happening, many times right under our noses. All across America, brothels of trafficked humans have been closed.

But many times people have confused trafficking with sex work.

I just finished reading a post called Sex Work, Trafficking: Understanding the Difference. Melissa Ditmore writes, “[T]reating sex work as if it is the same as sex trafficking both ignores the realities of sex work and endangers those engaged in it.”

It seems to me that there is a stratification of sex workers, and it all has to do with one thing: agency. And I mean this in the way that the British and classical philosophy use the word. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines agency as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.” In other words, how much power does the sex worker have? This is intimately involved with how many choices the person has.

Humans trafficked for sex do not have the capacity to exert power. They do not have agency. Children do not have agency. A woman who is pimped, forced to go out on the street, forced to give her money to the pimp, doesn’t have agency. Addiction can take away agency. Poverty can take away agency. Injustice can take away agency.

But there are many sex workers out there that do have agency. There are people who have decided to make money in the sex industry, who have chosen to do this work. Although they have choices, this is their best one. Many have made this choice so that they can stay at home with their children. Many have made this choice because they can make more money than they can make in more traditional jobs. Many have made this choice because they enjoy it.

It’s also important to recognize that agency is a continuum, and sex workers can be found at any level on that continuum. And the continuum is not static. A person can find their agency changed in a matter of day or weeks.

Among all the discussion between sex workers and academics, religious folks and advocates, it seems as if everyone is looking for a one-size-fits-all solution to the entire sex industry. If you treat all people in sex work as if they have no agency, you become no different than traffickers, making choices for the people in sex work. You, in effect, take away any agency that they have. On the other hand, if you treat all people in sex work as if they have full agency, you don’t do enough to protect those who have no agency. You leave them enslaved.

Activists, religious people, academics and sex workers are looking for the one-size-fits-all answer. I have it. Increase the agency of all people in the sex industry.

But that’s the rub, folks. You can’t increase their agency in the same way. You increase the agency of a human who has been trafficked by rescuing her from her traffickers. You increase the agency of a child by releasing him from his pimps. You increase the agency of a pimped woman by giving her the money she makes. You increase the agency of an addict by treating the addiction. You increase the agency of the poor by giving them more access to poverty-busters (child care, health care, education, housing). Lastly, financial stability is a great agency builder. Money increases the capacity to exert control.

Increasing agency is a very individual process. Each person in the sex industry must be looked at as a precious individual, in their own continuum of agency, and their agency must be respected, cherished, and increased.